St Helens Council News

Liverpool Echo - St Helens

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An infamous 'bogeyman' known as Purple Aki has lost an appeal against an order banning him from squeezing other men's muscle.

A judge who heard Akinwale Arobieke's appeal described him as 'out of control'.The 46-year-old had challenged a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (Sopo) that stopped him from pressing flesh and asking men and boys to squat.

The odd obsession with muscle development landed him with a six-year jail spell in 2003 when he admitted 15 counts of harassment and a charge of witness intimidation.Many of the young men targeted by Arobieke were from St Helens, and after his release from jail he was barred from entering the town.In jail complaints against the 6ft 5in asthma sufferer continued to rack up from inmates claiming he touched them and asked to measure biceps with a shoelace.

Despite jail and the Sopo, Arobieke insisted he should be allowed to touch men's muscles in private and with consent.

He insisted it was nothing sexual - contrary to witnesses' claims he was aroused when jumping on their backs and bearhugging them.Judge William George insisted the Sopo, made by magistrates last year, was valid.Referring to an episode in which Arobieke, who is originally from Toxeth, Liverpool, touched a stranger's arm in Preston last year after the Sopo was made, the judge said: ''It shows he is out of control.

He is out of his own control according to his own evidence.''Arobieke has never been convicted of a sex assault - though charges of indecent assault were left to lie on file when he was imprisoned in 2003.Until explicit accounts of his odd and terrifying behaviour were outlined in court during his 2003 trial many believed Purple Aki was little more than a urban legend.

His infamy is now such that he has a page on Wikipedia detailing his bizarre antics, while television cameras captured a music fan at this year's Glastonbury festival waving a purple flag emblazoned with his police mugshot.

Dr Sue Ryan, a psychologist for Merseyside Police, told Liverpool Crown Court: ''I believe that without psychological intervention and or external restraints through a Sopo, Mr Arobieke will continue to reoffend by harassing and touching male children and young men.''

Rob Wynn-Jones, counsel for Arobieke, said of him: ''He was achieving infamy in Liverpool and surrounding areas and he was engaging in - his own words - eccentric behaviour.''His reputation grew as a local bogeyman. Stories about him grew wilder and wilder.''